Durham updates

1,055 marriages at Monkwearmouth St. Peter’s, from 1735 to 1799 inclusive, plus one from 1700. Includes witnesses.

Since pre-1785 marriage registers were destroyed by a fire in 1790, this is a compilation of all known (to us) surviving marriage records for this church in any form. Some marriages in this period have been re-created from Bishop’s Transcripts and extracts of parish registers belonging to families and other agencies. Some of these extracts were compiled into a “register” after the fire. All marriages drawn from something other than the original register have their source noted in the record. You can read more about the fire and the alternative sources in Ken Coleman’s Monkwearmouth History article in our Literature Library.

Samples:

22 Oct 1769 Peter Wanless, of Monkwearmouth married Jane Dummins, of this parish, by banns [Note: from the Bishop’s Transcript]

In the second example, note that this marriage was by licence, which means there should be an accompanying marriage bond in our marriage bond database when we get that far (we are only up to 1759 currently). In the course of compiling these, we discovered numerous marriage bonds for Monkwearmouth folk whose marriage cannot be found in the Monkwearmouth registers. In some cases, they may have married in another parish, but in many cases, we suspect the marriage was recorded in registers destroyed by the fire, in which case the marriage bond may be the only evidence of the marriage, or at least intent to marry. Yet another reason for us to keep working on our marriage bond database!

Hurworth baptisms & burials 1813-1822, 1824-1835

At Hurworth All Saints, in Darlington district, baptisms & burials from the Bishop’s Transcript, covering 1813-1835 except 1823 is temporarily missing; we will get it online in a couple of weeks.

831 baptisms. From March 1828 onward, most include birthdates. Sample:

4,104 burials at Sunderland Holy Trinity covering 1822 to mid-1830. This set filled a gap we had, so we now have a continuous run of burials at this church from 1719 – 1838. We will next work on filling the gap from 1839 to 1841, as we already have 1842 online.

1,234 burials at Jarrow St. Paul covering 1820-1832. This included the burial of 40 men who were all killed in a gas explosion in the Bensham Seam of Jarrow Colliery on 3 Aug 1830. There were twice as many burials as usual in the 2nd half of 1832, possibly because of the cholera epidemic that entered Sunderland in the late summer of that year and spread across the country.